Friday, January 23, 2015

Game Time: Double Dragon (1993)

In the 80's & 90's, DIC was more than willing to produce shows based on just about any video game they could find that wasn't already licensed to another studio.

Double Dragon lasted 2 seasons (1993-5), airing mostly on Sundays, and, as with the game, told the tale of the Lee twins, Billy & Jimmy, the latter of whom had been raised by his evil uncle, the Shadowmaster, until discovering the fiend had lied to him all along.

Here's the intro:

Comics artist Chuck Patton directed most, if not all, of the episodes. However, the series today sits in the vaults, a forgotten relic of its time.

It's like a less-dramatic version of the problem Mortal Kombat had. They were adapting a violent and somewhat morally-grey game, and tried to turn it into a typical good-vs-evil superhero story with most of the actual punching removed.

The original Double Dragon arcade game was about street toughs Spike and Hammer, who went around beating up everyone they could find with any weapon they could get their hands on (or with their bare hands if nothing else was available), until they tracked down the grim-faced machine-gun wielding gang leader who kidnapped their mutual girlfriend.

The cartoon was about a socially-conscious guy who ran a dojo for kids (soon joined by his equally socially-conscious brother and a bunch of other characters not from the game), used magic beam-shooting swords to transform into hideous-looking secret identities, and lived by a "code" that boiled down to "don't hurt anyone, ever." The girlfriend was now a policewoman (which is not, in itself a bad change), and the gang leader was now a loudmouthed rootin'-tootin' Wild West stereotype with a pair of laser-shooting pistols (and he was effectively killed off early in the run by the show's actual villain).

Now, as drastic as all the changes were, it could have worked, if the show itself had actually been, you know, good. It wasn't.